One of the obvious moves in cyborg literature is from prosthetics (arms, legs, exoskeletons, eyes) to technologies that interface directly with the mind. I am thinking of the Gibson Neuromancer trilogy, with its jacked-in hackers, but there are tons of examples. And in keeping with the theme of augmentation and amputation, there is something lost or in the shadows regarding mind/machine links.
Firefly caught my eye partly because one of the characters, River Tam, is a disturbed character (erratic, schizophrenic, exhibiting signs of mental illness and/or instability) who has been the subject of horrifying brain experiments at a supposed school for the high achieving called The Academy. As the FireflyWiki explains,
The Academy was actually a scientific installation (likely funded by the Blue Suncorporation)... Blue Sun still considers River their property, and they will stop at nothing to get River back. Unfortunately, exactly what River is now remains uncertain. River's brain was operated on countless times while The Academy had her in its clutches, and she was treated for all intents and purposes like a laboratory animal. Simon was able to perform diagnostic tests and now knows for certain that, among other things, they cut into her brain multiple times. They even stripped her amygdala, which is a part of the brain used to control emotional responses and 'filter' incoming information. As he describes it: "She feels everything; she can't not.
In my dissertation, I discuss the 1950s technologies of lobotomy and shock treatment, as shadow narratives of cybernetics. A frightening amount of brain "research" (in particular, the funded work of Jose Delgado and others of his ilk) crossed over into searches for mind control and even torture. Wikipedia accurately describes Delgado's work thus:
Much of Delgado's work was with an invention he called a stimoceiver, a radio which joined a stimulator of brain waves with a receiver which monitored E.E.G. waves and sent them back on separate radio channels. This allowed the subject of the experiment full freedom of movement while allowing the experimenter to control the experiment. The stimoceiver could be used to stimulate emotions and control behavior. According to Delgado, "Radio Stimulation of different points in the amygdala and hippocampus in the four patients produced a variety of effects, including pleasant sensations, elation, deep, thoughtful concentration, odd feelings, super relaxation, colored visions, and other responses." Delgado stated that "brain transmitters can remain in a person's head for life. The energy to activate the brain transmitter is transmitted by way of radio frequencies." (Source: Cannon; Delgado, J.M.R., "Intracerebral Radio Stimulation and recording in Completely Free Patients," in Schwitzgebel and Schwitzgebel (eds.))
Firefly does a remarkable job of showing the terrible effects of what was done to River, and also of parsing out in bits and pieces the story of how and why these things were done. One sequence shows her in a dream sequence at The Academy, filmed through a gauzy soft filter; the lovely teacher walks up to her and puts her finger on River's forehead, and suddenly the scene shifts to a researcher pushing a needle into the forehead of a screaming River as we see her trussed up like a monkey in some hideous experiment.
In Firefly there is a connection between the organic brilliant mind (in the show River's brother is a brilliant doctor, top 3% of his class; but River is shown to be the genius, early on the smarter) and a "science" that is interested in a variety of ways to control and manipulate actual minds, especially ones already "super" human. She is driven mad by their efforts (much as some subjects in the 50s and 60s were made much worse by lobotomies, shock treatment, and even Nazi-like experiments), turned into a machine/killer (a la The Manchurian Candidate), and apparently also deprived of her ability to filter things (and so both a "reader" of others' minds, and someone unable to block out the thoughts/emotions of others, including the dead). I think Whedon is trying to say that all powerful governments, like the Alliance in the show, want to control minds, and will be prone to finding ways to do so (modern torture techniques derive in part from work on brains and minds done in the 60s by doctors working for the CIA). And he is saying that it is not impossible that the brain can't be augmented (River "knows" things she shouldn't know, like martial arts and how to read thoughts; her journey is a lot like Jason Bourne's journey in The Bourne Identity, with similar questions: how do I know this?) but that societies that practice Alliance type control (including control over how the history of the rebellion is taught to children) will enact sciences of the mind that bear out their priorities. The show has a definite critique of eugenics Nazi-style, and implies that this kind of control can shift from the individual (performed on River) to entire societies (the horror revealed in the move follow up Serenity about the planet Miranda and the social experiments there gone genocidally wrong).
Of this kind of dilemma, Whedon has said, "nothing will change in the future: technology will advance, but we will still have the same political, moral, and ethical problems as today."
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